Katherine Brodsky spoke about her new book, *No Apologies*. She discussed her research on those subjected to public harassment and abuse for speaking against the vocal minority. She also talked about the culture wars and how to remedy them.
"
Her new book, *No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage - Lessons for the Silenced Majority*, is available now
I mean I thought by the time because I started writing this book about two and a half years ago and I was thinking you know is it going to still be timely by the time I'm done and it's out and I thought well if it's not timely that's probably a good thing but it's still timely.
I was noticing these trends of not being able to speak about things that we want to speak about and having open discourse I was noticing that for a long time and I was myself pretty self-sensoring I would say and then you know and then it happened to me and in my case you know I had a group that I ran and it was for women and female writers and it's just just a job board and one day somebody made the you know the awful mistake of posting a job opening at Fox News and people just sort of piled on to that person and then I chimed in saying hey let's stay away from personal attacks and politics and that was apparently enough to be called a white supremacist and Nazi I'd assume as soon let the KKK recruit and a lot of madness ensued and not only did I feel of myself I got a lot of letters from people telling me you know this is the experience that they've been having a lot of them have succumbed to the silencing a lot of them have lost their livelihoods and and their friend groups all of that and I felt a certain responsibility to speak up and and make that known and and have a bit of a I'm hoping have a bit of a calm voice when it comes to that not not not go into hysterics over it but but show people the the problem and and show people how we can perhaps fix that.
It's not just a matter of being good because there are people who are good but for example say you want to make movies and within the you know and you want to make movies of a certain budget if you are canceled from that industry no Matt you know even if you're good sometimes there's no coming back there's certain people oh no where that's an example oh for sure yeah if you're in a you know if you make a commercial airliner there's just something it's going to you have a hard time hanging your own shingle out there you know you're gonna have to break away in like right movies there's something and then turn them in under someone else's name or something sad which is very blacklist like right very McCarthyism everything they do is McCarthyism and that's what it feels like because a lot of people think about McCarthyism nonstop and then they act on McCarthyism well there isn't lot of that going on where I think I think people don't quite realize the extent of it and how much it affects everybody but then when you start talking to people about it on an individual basis like I don't have a lot of people who yell at me or disagree with me or have a problem left or right on this particular issue when I actually individually talk to them but you know it's very difficult to talk about certain topics and as a result we're not able I mean there's certain really controversial you know they shouldn't be controversial topics they should just be topics that we talk about and listen it could be wrong you could be right but if we discuss it maybe we arrive at some same point yeah that doesn't happen because people are so scared to speak about these things but once somebody starts like I've noticed with myself and I worked in the entertainment industry and media as well but even on sets like I worked on a movie this was after my whole experience and I became very outspoken and I decided I'm gonna be exactly the same way on set and I was and I had great conversations with people all sorts of people and very open and they brought up things to me and we had you know group conversations so people are I think they have that ache to be able to discuss things freely and they are not I don't think they're really even as polarized on the issues as we're led to believe.
My remedy is for individuals who are interested in using their own voice is to build a certain level of protection for themselves and that involves the you know build a community that supports you have a plan B that's one of the chapters in the book where you know have a plan B in terms of employment opportunities because that's the biggest hurdle for a lot of people there they can deal with losing you know friends and upgrading to maybe better ones but losing you know your career your passion that's what's really difficult for people and I think also you know you can you you can do things in small ways so you can begin by having open conversations with people around you which is which is generally safer then you can you know build up to that and and do it about things that you really care about you know it doesn't have to be every everything but if you're going to take a risk and it is a risk right because there are consequences absolutely and some people end up you know doing well and and building new futures and new careers and and and you know you tend to hear about this more and you also have a lot that don't and I think also supporting other people whether they're you're supporting a friend that is your you know that's your friend when they are going through something like that where people the mob is going against them or or basically just just I lost my track of thought.
No apologies how to find and free your voice in an age of outrage lessons for the silence majority.
